Since his early Radio Clyde days as the host of Doctor Dick's Midnight Surgery, Richard Park has revelled in his tough-talking reputation. His friend Neil "also not a real Doctor" Fox called him "the hardest bastard you've ever worked for in your life", millions of TV viewers knew him as the irascible "headmaster" on BBC1's reality show Fame Academy, and he is revered and feared in equal measure throughout the radio industry.

So it's something of a surprise to find the newly installed chief executive of Global Radio, handed the job as part of a shuffling of the deck while its protracted takeover of GCap goes before the Competition Commission, cheerily making small talk with staff. But it doesn't take long to shake him out of his bonhomie. As the turbulent commercial radio sector enters another new phase, Park wants to sweep away the thinking that has left too many of his colleagues wallowing in self-pity, and turn his fire on a familiar target.

"We've talked ourselves into a horrible position and some very smart people at the BBC have taken advantage," he says. "This is not a whinge from a disaffected ex-BBC employee or a disaffected ex-Capital Radio director. This is a view from the touchline, re-entering the major game again. I'm halfway down the tunnel with my boots on."

Commercial radio types have long moaned about the BBC acting in an overly aggressive fashion, paying over the odds for big-name talent and distorting the market. But last week they received a boost from an unlikely source. Although widely interpreted as a green light for the salaries paid to Jonathan Ross et al, the BBC Trust review of talent costs was more nuanced. In particular, it identified network radio as one area where further work was required to determine why the BBC was paying so much more than the market could afford.

Big salaries, combined with radio's reach and the opportunity for ancillary TV work, have left BBC stations bursting with talent - from Chris Moyles to Zane Lowe, Terry Wogan to Ross, Kirsty Young to Simon Mayo - and the commercial cupboard looking pretty bare.

Park goes on to reel off a list of big BBC names - Scott Mills, Moyles, Steve Wright, Chris Evans, Ross - who started in commercial radio. "They have painted commercial radio into a very tight corner where they have to pay more money than there is in the marketplace. Would Chris Evans come back to commercial radio? Not in a million years. Something has to be done. We can't keep dispensing public money to make TV commercials for Radio 1. The marketing is out of all proportion. If there is anyone who doesn't know when Wogan or Moyles is on, I haven't met them."

The BBC has long argued that commercial players - having swapped creativity for corporate chess, and investment in talent for digital transmitters - are blaming it for their own failings. Director general Mark Thompson has insisted BBC radio is "exogenous" to the commercial market; and executives insist that Radio 1 and Radio 2 perform an important public service role in bringing new British music to the fore, and deny they replicate commercial offerings.

Park recognises the commercial sector has not helped itself. His charge sheet is short but to the point: commercial stations have spent too long doubting themselves in the face of a sure-footed BBC. That led to panic and too many short term fixes. How to sort things out? Find the talent, trust it, and celebrate it.

At GCap, the pressures of the City led to a corporate malaise: "So great was the strain that inevitably the thinking has become a bit muddled." He believes that the private ownership of Global, headed by former Capital whizz kid Ashley Tabor and backed by money from the Irish racing magnates JP McManus and John Magnier, will allow more space for clarity of thought.

After leaving Capital, Park ran a music publishing business, had that spell on Fame Academy and went back behind the LBC microphone before joining Emap as a consultant to breathe new life into Magic. He jokes that becoming public property was "bloody awful", but you can tell he loved every second. It also reignited his belief that, as the man who nurtured talent as diverse as Chris Tarrant, Fox, Pete Tong and Tim Westwood, he could discover a new generation.

"It led me to refresh my own memory about how many good broadcasters there are outside London who never get the chance," he says. "All I was ever reading from people in publications like yours was that there is no one out there, nothing doing, we can't find any talent. Well excuse me, you're not looking." He accepts the talent production line has stuttered to a halt but insists it can be restarted. "There are people broadcasting right now in Newcastle, in Scotland, in Manchester, in Birmingham that could be very good."

Allied to that, he recommends a less cavalier, more celebratory approach to the key talent commercial radio does have. To that end, he reveals Heart has re-signed Jamie Theakston on a new three-year deal to continue his successful breakfast double act with Harriet Scott, and that Nick Ferrari, the love-him-or-hate-him breakfast host of LBC, has also signed a new contract.

Global Radio's deal, expected to be approved with a handful of conditions, will bring together Chrysalis brands Heart, LBC and Galaxy with GCap, owner of Capital, Classic FM and Xfm. Together with Bauer's purchase of Emap's stations (Magic, Kiss, The Hits) and last week's takeover of Virgin Radio, Park insists it is a new start for a sector that has long warranted its beleaguered tag."We're opening a new chapter, nay it might even be a new book," he says.

Most of his contemporaries have cashed in their chips, but Park is raring to go. If and when the GCap deal goes through, Britain's biggest radio group will be an intriguing family affair - Park's son, Paul Jackson, is MD of Capital.

It also means a return to centre stage for the former ITV chief executive Charles Allen. There are those who suggest he is the best possible chairman for Global, given his experience at ITV where he was known for his deftness with regulators and cost-cutting expertise, but was never truly comfortable with the creative side. There are also those who suggest he is the worst possible, for exactly the same reasons.

"Anyone who doesn't think Charles Allen is a terrific operator, doesn't get it," insists Park. "The people who get it are clear: Allen is a class act. He's highly knowledgeable about all aspects of broadcasting. He has a vision. Most important of all, he believes in the venture."

True to type, Park insists he feels no sentimentality at the prospect of Global acquiring Capital. Instead, his sights are trained firmly on Broadcasting House. "This is a difficult time in Britain, this is not the way for the BBC to be behaving. There are things they should be putting money into that they are not. They are overtly commercial, which is not what they were set up for," he says. "The times are definitely a-changing. There's a huge wave coming. It doesn't need the likes of Richard Park chirping away. But this to me is the burning issue of the moment."